been playing Celeste, a 2D platformer from the dudes who made Towerfall and it's really good. like REALLY good. the OST and pixel art are all fantastic and it has a surprisingly touching story about a girl dealing with anxiety and depression. it's not hamfisted at all - it feels genuine and relatable. of course you can just skip the cutscenes if you're only into the platforming, but i don't recommend it.

level design is best in class. every chapter starts out introducing you to mechanics specific to the chapter and then ramping them up until the final few stages where you get a mix of everything and then a pseudo-boss sequence, usually consisting of chasing or being chased (think first boss of Super Meat Boy). on that note, it's a challenging game. definitely not Mario in terms of difficulty, but not I Wanna Be The Guy either. all of the difficulty is fair - no 'gotcha' moments. there hasn't been a single level with spike pits you can't see or projectiles that only trigger once you get close. what i think separates it from other challenging platformers is that it's actually fun the entire way. in games like Super Meat Boy or The End is Nigh you can get into a rut where you're just banging your head against the walll. as a result it's not fun anymore and you're just beating it to get on to the next level. Celeste has never felt like that. it's probably the best platformer i've ever played at being fun and challenging without feeling hopelessly frustrating. ofc i can only say this about the main game. the optional unlockable levels are very tough but again they're optional and there for those kind of masochistic platformer players.

but yeah it's definitely gonna end up on my 2018 GOTY list. incredible game

I saw it on the switch and was curious, but didn't think too much about it. On your recommendation, I'll check it out.

I've mainly been playing dumb games recently. VR prototype stuff and other simple experiences. And I've started playing competitive smash again. So I haven't had time to sit down and play a good, traditional game yet for a while. Lone Echo sort of qualifies but, I don't know how I feel about it yet. It's really well made but, it hasn't affected me that much yet.

i didn't think much of it either when i heard about either. thought "oh cool a 2D platformer to sink a few hours into" but the glowing reviews from journalists and the general gaming community made me check it out. it doesn't do anything new (it's just screen-by-screen platforming with an air dash and climbing) but it's just so damn well made. there's some good reviews out there so you can decide whether it's worth a buy.

i think i've seen you play Subnautica on Steam a few times. i'm guessing you're playing the VR version? how are you liking it? it looks absolutely terrifying in VR.

You get over horror in VR pretty quickly. While it's really immersive initially, it quickly becomes something you can easily disassociate from. At least for me. So, in that sense, I don't think I've found subnautica that much scarier in VR than I would have otherwise. But it was definitely pretty freaky the first time I ran into a sea monster at night.

Subnautica is cool. I don't think it deserves as much praise as it's gotten. It's basically like any other high end survival game on steam like the Forest, but with a way cooler setting and much more stuff to do. I like it a lot so far. It probably plays just as well, if not better, on a regular screen. It has lots of small text that's pretty hard to read on the headset.

i don't think it deserves the praise either, but i also don't think i'm the audience for it. i get frustrated with games that don't have a direction. what do i build? what do i collect? where do i go? that's obviously the point, but it doesn't work for me. i also found the pop in to be extremely distracting and immersion killing.

i'll give it credit for being a finished game though unlike most early access survival trite

Finally got around to Hearthstone, I love it, well, with a glaring nitpick I guess. It's a neat blend of MtG and WoW. I'm so tempted to pay money on it but so far I haven't. I earned a few free booster packs for preordering the SC2 and D3 expansions apparently and some of the cards I got blow the free ones out of the water, so uh, I hate how it kinda resembles gambling in order to win but then again, that's the current state of MtG tbh. I'm going to try to beat the dungeon modes since they offer some nice rewards to your card collection and are entirely hard as fuck to new players, I just hate feeling so disadvantaged for not paying my way to win these days. Still love the game in its core, the card interactions and animations are so good, but you literally have to play it everyday to earn a single booster pack or you can spend $60 and get everything you want. For a casual player, you'd honestly be completely fine on the single player mode. I'm one of those competitive assholes with TCGs though, always have been back in my early MtG days. You CAN win with a shitty deck in MtG if you know how to control the board, in Hearthstone, not so much in comparison, it's all dependent on the collection you have which is my only gripe with the game. Blizz does do the nerfs ofc but it's just not the same, literally my only flaw with such a fun and unique card game.

That's always been my beef with them, I don't like asymmetrical resources in competitive games.

It's one thing if you're playing a strategy game and someone is a different race, or a fighting game and someone is a different character, you at least still, even if they're DLC, have access to information about them or even the ability to play them yourself.

In TCG's, you have to pay money to gamble on access to the rest of the game, which I think is fucking bonkers.

It's still possible to win but, it's got to leave a sour taste in your mouth to lose to somebody that *bought* their way to victory. That ain't fun.

I hear ya loud and clear, I still own six MtG decks that are pretty damn good, but I used to own a couple decks that were super expensive and overpowered as hell. I had more fun with my weaker decks in the long run since the better ones were so broken, I ended up selling them.

The one thing I did forget to mention is during the single player dungeon mode (a set of challenges to access cards besides daily PvP grinding) you get to play with godlike decks against other AI godlike decks so that part is fun. Just sucks when you go back to PvP and remembering your decks are trash as a FTP player for the most part. There are videos of people getting max rank without paying a dime so it is possible but they are gods at the game. I'm going to stick with it for now, I would play Magic Duels instead but it's too buggy right now.

you should sign up for the MTG Arena alpha. it's MTG's answer to hearthstone. it has the most recent 2 sets and will add every future set. dunno if they plan to implement modern or legacy cards. it doesn't have the polish of hearthstone but they're supposed to revamp the graphical aspect of the game from what i've heard. even as it stands now it gets the job done though.

and yeah i like hearthstone mechanically but i'm too late to jump in and the RNG in that game is horrendous. i'd just rather play MTG every time.

In TCG's, you have to pay money to gamble on access to the rest of the game, which I think is fucking bonkers.

to be fair this is more of an issue with CCGs like hearthstone than TCGs where you don't have the option to buy the cards you want. booster packs are horribly inefficient and not worth the money like ever. they're just kinda fun to open. the real issue is the fucking money you have to invest. there's cool formats in MTG like pauper which basically uses cheap cards, but if you want to play it competitively in any way prepare to shell out a lot. i dropped like 4 grand total when i played MTG a lot. admittedly i played a lot of modern and legacy decks in MTG (i.e. expensive ass cards) but even standard decks don't come cheap.

TCGs are honestly one of my favorite type of games but the price is such a turn off. thank god for Cockatrice and Tabletop Simulator, which let you play with any cards you want for free.

I need to check out that MtG Arena alpha then, sounds cool. I hope they add Legacy since that is my preferred method to play the game honestly. So much more balanced back then, despite mono black decks for a short time. idk I still love Hearthstone, even when I know it's flawed to all hell. I'm just starting to get sick and tried fighting three ppl "on my level" and went 1-2 since they had cards way outside balance for multiplayer. At least I got a booster pack out of it. At the same time, I'm like fuck this game. I don't and won't abandon it right now, but sure does suck for casual fan of the genre. I love TCGs, Magic defined my childhood. Usually the MtG clones end up bugged to all hell so that's why I avoid them.